“But I don’t—”
“And one other thing.” Stevens fixes her with his gaze. His voice drops an octave, gets very serious. “This man. The Governor. He is not to be trusted. You understand? He is capable of anything. So just steer clear of him … and bide your time until you can get out of here. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She doesn’t answer, just stares at him, soaking it in.
* * *
Darkness closes in around the town. Some of the windows begin to glow with lantern light, others already pulsing with the unpredictable current of generators. At night, Woodbury has the surreal, retrofitted feel of the twenty-first century transported to the nineteenth—an atmosphere that has become de rigueur among most post-plague settlements. At one corner, torch flames bathe a boarded, desecrated McDonald’s, the yellow-orange light reflecting off the ruins of its crumbling golden arches.
Martinez’s men, posted on cherry pickers at key junctures of the barricade, now begin to deal with an increasing number of moving shadows on the edges of the adjacent woods. Walker traffic has picked up slightly since of the return of the reconnaissance party, and now .50 caliber placements on the north and west sides crackle with intermittent gunfire. It gives the little town—which now basks in the purple, hazy twilight of dusk—a war-zone feel.
Trundling past a portico of storefronts, carrying a peach crate brimming with provisions, Lilly Caul heads for her building. She hears the spit of automatic weaponry behind her, echoing across the windswept street. She pauses and glances over her shoulder at the sound of a voice rising over the gunfire.
“LILLY, WAIT UP!”
In the strobelike volleys of tracer bullets arcing across the sky, the silhouette of a young man in leather and flowing dark curls lopes toward Lilly. Austin has a duffel bag heavy with supplies over his shoulder. He lives half a block west of Lilly’s place. He comes up with a big, expectant grin on his face. “Let me help you with that.”
“It’s okay, Austin, I got it,” she says as he tries to take the crate from her. For an awkward moment, they play push-pull with the crate. Finally Lilly gives up. “All right, all right … take it.”
Now Austin happily walks alongside her with the crate in his arms. “That was quite an adrenaline rush today, was it not?”
“Easy, Austin … pace yourself.”
They walk toward Lilly’s building. In the distance, an armed man paces along a row of semitrailers at the end of the street. Austin gives Lilly that same provocative little grin he’s been plying her with for weeks. “Guess we tasted the camaraderie of the battlefield together, huh? Kinda bonded out there, didn’t we?”
“Austin, can you please give it a rest.”
“I’m wearing you down, though, aren’t I?”
Lilly shakes her head and lets out a little laugh despite her nerves. “You are relentless, I’ll give you that.”
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Are you asking me out?”
“There’s a fight in the arena. Why don’t you let me take you to it, I’ll bring those Twizzlers I found today.”
Lilly’s smile fades. “Not a big fan.”
“Of what? Twizzlers?”
“Very funny. Those fights are barbaric. I’d rather eat broken glass.”
Austin shrugs. “If you say so.” His eyes glint with an idea. “How about this: Instead of a date, why don’t you give me some more pointers sometime?”
“Pointers on what?”
“On dealing with the dead.” All at once he gets a solemn expression on his face. “I’ll be honest with ya. Since all this shit started up, I’ve kinda hidden out with big groups … never really had to fend for myself. I’ve got a lot to learn. I’m not like you.”
She gives him a glance as they walk. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’re a badass, Lilly … you got that cold, calculating, Clint Eastwood thing going on.”
They reach the parkway in front of Lilly’s apartment building, now draped in shadow, the dead kudzu vines on the redbrick exterior looking like a cancerous growth in the waning light.
Lilly pauses, turns to Austin, and says, “Thanks for the help, Austin. I’ll take it from here.” She takes the crate and looks at him. “One thing, though.” She licks her lips and feels a twinge of emotion pinching her insides. “I wasn’t always like this. You should have seen me back at the beginning. Scared of my own shadow. But somebody helped me when I needed it. And they didn’t have to. Believe me. But they did, they helped me.”
Austin doesn’t say anything, just nods his head and waits for her to finish her thought, because it looks as though something is eating at her. Something important.
“I’ll show you some things,” she says at last. “And by the way … this is the only way we’re going to survive. By helping each other.”
Austin smiles, and for the first time since Lilly has known him, it’s a warm, sincere, guileless smile. “I appreciate it, Lilly. I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick.”
“You haven’t been a dick,” she says, and then, without warning, she leans over the crate and gives him a platonic little kiss on the cheek. “You’re just young.”
She turns and goes inside, gently shutting the door in his face.
Austin stands there for quite some time, staring at that wide oak entrance door, rubbing his cheek as though it were touched with holy water.
* * *
“Doc?” Three hard, sharp knocks shatter the stillness of the makeshift infirmary … followed by the unmistakable throaty voice, with its faint rural Georgia accent, just outside the door: “The new patient taking any visitors?”
Across the gray, cinder block–lined room, Dr. Stevens and Alice glance at each other. They stand at a stainless steel basin, sterilizing instruments in a pail of scalding water, the steam drifting up across their taut expressions. “Hold on a second!” Stevens calls out, wiping his hands and going over to the door.
Before opening the door, Stevens glances across the infirmary at the patient sitting up on the side of her gurney, her spindly, bandaged legs dangling. Christina, still in her robe, sips filtered water from a plastic cup, a woolen blanket pulled up across her midsection. Her swollen face—still beautiful, even with her matted wheat-straw hair pulled back into a knotted scrunchy—registers the tension.
In that instant before the door opens, something unspoken passes between doctor and patient. Stevens nods, and then opens the door.
“I understand we got a brave little lady in our midst!” the visitor booms as he sweeps into the room like a force of nature. The Governor’s gaunt, coiled body is now clad in weekend warrior garb—a hunting vest, black turtleneck, and camo pants tucked into black combat boots—making him look like a degenerate third-world dictator. His shoulder-length onyx hair shines and bounces as he saunters into the room, his handlebar mustache curled around a smirk. “Came to pay my respects.”
Gabe and Bruce enter on the Governor’s heels, the two men as dour and alert as secret service agents.
“There she is,” Philip Blake says to the girl sitting on the gurney. He walks over to the bed, grabs a nearby metal folding chair, and slams it down backwards next to the bed. “How ya doing, little lady?”
Christina puts her water down, and then chastely pulls the blanket up over the top of her threadbare décolletage. “Doing all right, I guess. Thanks to these folks.”
The Governor plops down on the chair in front of her, resting his wiry arms on the seat back. His stare is the jovial gaze of an overzealous salesman. “Doc Stevens and Alice here are the best … they surely are. Don’t know what we’d do without them.”
Stevens speaks up from across the room. “Christina, say hello to Philip Blake. Also known as the Governor.” The doctor lets out a sigh and looks away, as though disgusted by this whole display of fake conviviality. “Philip, this is Christina.”
“Christina,” the Governor purrs, as though trying the name on for size. “Now isn’t th
at just the prettiest name ever?”
A sudden and powerful tremor of apprehension trickles down the small of Christina’s back. Something about this man’s eyes—as deep-set and dark as a puma’s—sets her immediately on edge.
The Governor doesn’t take his glittering dark gaze off her as he speaks to the others. “You folks mind if the lady and I speak in private?”
Christina wants to say something, wants to object, but the force of this man’s personality is like a roaring river flowing through the room. Without a word, the others glance at each other, and then, sheepishly, one by one, they file out of the infirmary. The last one out is Gabe, who pauses in doorway. “I’ll be right outside, boss,” he says. And then …
Click.
SEVEN
“So, Christina … welcome to Woodbury.” At first, the Governor keeps his high-voltage smile trained on the injured woman. “Can I ask where you’re from?”
Christina takes a deep breath, looking down at her lap. For some inchoate reason, she feels compelled to keep the TV station she worked at a secret. Instead she simply says, “Suburb of Atlanta, got hit pretty bad.”
“I’m from a little shithole town outside Savannah, name of Waynesboro.” His grin widens. “Nothing fancy like them rich sections of Hot-Lanta.”
She shrugs. “I sure as heck ain’t rich.”
“Them places are all gone to hell now, ain’t they? Biters won that war.” He aims that grin at her. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
She stares at him, says nothing.
The Governor’s smile fades. “Can I ask how you ended up in that chopper?”
For a brief instant she hesitates. “The pilot was … a friend. Name’s Mike.” She swallows back her reticence. “Problem is, I promised him a Christian burial.” She feels the heat of the Governor’s stare like a furnace. “You think I could possibly see to that?”
The thin man scoots his chair closer to the bed. “I think we ought to be able to accommodate you in that department … that is … if you play ball.”
“If I what?”
The Governor shrugs. “Just answer a few questions. That’s all.” He pulls a pack of Juicy Fruit gum from his vest pocket, peels off a piece, and pops it into his mouth. He offers her a piece. She declines. He puts the gum away and scoots the chair closer. “You see, Christina … the thing is … I have a responsibility to my people. There’s a certain … due diligence I gotta tend to.”
She looks at him. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Were you and the pilot alone? Or were there other people with you before you took off?”
Again she swallows hard, girding herself. “We were holed up with a few people.”
“Where?”
She shrugs. “You know … here and there.”
The Governor smiles and shakes his head. “Now, see, Christina … that just won’t do.” He shoves the seat back against the gurney—close enough now for her to smell his scent: cigarettes and chewing gum and something unidentifiable like spoiled meat—and he speaks softly now. “In a court of law, a good counselor might see his way to making an objection on the grounds that the witness is withholding information.”
He’s about to cross a boundary, a voice drones in Christina’s head, he’s not to be trusted, he’s capable of anything. In barely a whisper, she says, “I wasn’t aware I was on trial here.”
The Governor’s lean, deeply lined face transforms, any trace of mirth going out of it. “You don’t have to be scared of me.”
She looks at him. “I’m not scared of you.”
“The truth of the matter is, I don’t want to force anybody to do anything they don’t want to do … nobody has to get hurt.” With the casual gesture of a man shooting his cuffs, he puts his gnarled hand on the edge of the bed, between her thighs, provocatively—not touching her, just resting it between her bandaged legs. His gaze doesn’t waver. It stays locked on to her. “It’s just that … I will do whatever it takes to make sure this community survives. You understand?”
She looks down at his hand, at the dirt under his nails. “Yes.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and start talking, sweetheart, and I’ll listen.”
Christina lets out an anguished breath, her posture changing. She stares into her lap. “I worked at Channel 9, WROM, the Fox affiliate out of North Atlanta.… I was a segment producer … bake sales and lost pets and such. Worked in that big tower on Peachtree, the one with the helipad on the roof.” Her breathing gets labored, the pain pressing down on her as she talks. “When the Turn happened, about twenty of us got trapped at the station.… We lived off the food in the cafeteria on the fourth floor for a while … then we started taking the traffic copter out on supply runs.” She runs out of breath for a moment.
The Governor stares. “They got any of them supplies left up there?”
Christina shakes her head. “Nothing … no food … no power … nothing. When we ran out of food … people started turning on each other.” She closes her eyes and tries to block out the memories that come flooding back like flash frames from a snuff film: the blood-spattered steam tables and all the monitors filled with snow and the severed head in the festering walk-in freezer and the screams at night. “Mike protected me, bless his heart.… He was the traffic pilot … we worked together for years … and finally he and I … we managed to sneak up to the roof and steal away in Mike’s traffic copter. We thought we were home free … but we didn’t realize … there was somebody in our group who was dead set on stopping anybody else from leaving. He sabotaged the helicopter’s engine. We knew it immediately. Barely made it out of the city … got maybe fifty miles or so … before we started hearing … before we saw the…” She shakes her head forlornly, and then looks up. “Anyway … you know the rest.” She tries to hide the fact that she’s trembling. Her voice sharpens, turns rueful. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“You’ve been through a lot.” The Governor pats her bandaged thigh, his demeanor changing suddenly. He gives her a smile, pushes himself away from the bed, and rises to his feet. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. These are tough times … but you’re safe here.”
“Safe?” She can’t turn off her simmering anger. Her eyes water with rage. The hard-bitten side of her comes out now, the veteran segment producer who doesn’t take shit from anybody. “Are you serious?”
“I’m totally serious, sweetheart. We’re building something good here, something solid. And we’re always looking for good people to join us.”
“I don’t think so.” She glowers at him. “I think I’ll take my chances out there with the biters.”
“Now calm down, honey. I know you’ve been through the mill. But that’s no reason to pass up something good. We’re building a community here.”
“Give me a break!” She practically spits the words at him. “I know all about you.”
“All right, that’s enough.” He sounds like a teacher trying to calm an unruly student. “Let’s dial it back a little.”
“Maybe you can fool some of these hayseeds with your little Benevolent Leader routine—”
He lunges at her and slaps her—a backhand across her bruised face—hard enough to whiplash her head against the wall.
She gasps and blinks, and swallows the pain. She rubs her face and finds enough breath to speak very softly and evenly. “I’ve worked with men like you my entire career. You call yourself a governor? Really? You’re just a schoolyard bully who’s found a playground to rule. The doctor told me all about you.”
Standing over her, the Governor nods and smiles coldly. His face hardens. His eyes narrow, the halogen light reflecting in his dark irises like two silver pinpricks. “I tried,” he murmurs, more to himself than to her. “God knows I tried.”
He lunges at her again, this time going for her neck. She stiffens on the bed as he chokes her. She looks into his eyes. She calms down all of a sudden as he strangles her. Her body starts to spasm
involuntarily against the gurney, making the casters squeak, but she feels no pain anymore. The blood drains from her face. She wants to die.
The Governor softly whispers, “There we go … there … there … gonna be all right…”
Her eyes roll back, showing the whites, as she turns livid in his grip. Her legs kick and twitch, knocking over the IV stand. The steel apparatus clatters to the floor, spilling glucose.
In the silence that follows the woman grows stone-still, her eyes frozen in an empty pale stare. Another moment passes, and then the Governor lets go.
* * *
Philip Blake steps back from the gurney on which the woman from Atlanta now lies dead, her arms and legs akimbo, dangling over the side of the bed. He catches his breath, inhaling and exhaling deeply, getting himself together.
In some distant compartment of his brain, a faint voice objects and pushes back, but he stuffs it back down into that dark fractured place in his mind. He mutters to himself, his voice barely audible to his own ears, as though an argument is under way, “Had to be done … I had no choice in the matter … no choice.…”
“BOSS?!”
The muffled sound of Gabe’s voice on the other side of the door brings him back. “Just a second,” he calls out, the forceful tone of his voice returning. “Just gimme a second here.”
He swallows hard and goes over to the sink. He runs water, splashes his face, washes his hands, and dries himself on a damp towel. And just as he’s about to turn away, he catches a glimpse of his own reflection in the surface of the stainless steel cabinet over the sink. His face, shimmering back at him in the liquid silver surface of the cabinet, looks almost ghostly, translucent, unborn. He turns away. “C’mon in, Gabe!”
The door clicks, and the stocky, balding man peers inside the room. “Everything okay?”
“Gonna need a hand with something,” the Governor says, indicating the dead woman. “This has to be done just right. Don’t talk, just listen.”
* * *
In a residential building next to the racetrack, on the second floor, in the dusty stillness, Dr. Stevens slouches drowsily with his lab coat unbuttoned, a Bon Appétit magazine tented over his poochy, patrician belly, a half-empty bottle of contraband Pinot Noir on the crate next to him, when a knock at his door makes him jerk in his armchair. He gropes for his eyeglasses.
The Fall of the Governor, Part 1 Page 8
